A few minutes after 4 A.M. on April 1, 1966, a commando team of twelve Viet Cong from Bien Hoa loaded into two gray vans and rolled out of a small villa compound in Cholon, the Chinese sector of Saigon. They headed east on Tran Hung Dao Street, armed with AK-47 assault rifles, Chinese K-5 pistols, and plastique explosives.

I was asleep in a small Navy officers' billet, dead tired after a twelve-hour shift on military police duty in the city. I had come off duty at midnight after briefing the duty officer, Lieutenant Chester Lee, Commander, C Company, 716th Military Police (MP) Battalion. I was a captain, in command of Company B's 200 military policemen.

I had only been asleep since 2 A.M. when I had arrived exhausted and hit the sack in my dirty, stinking, soaking-wet fatigue uniform after quietly placing my boots under my cot. My roommate was a U.S. Navy patrol boat commander with a bad temper. He slept with a .45 caliber pistol under his pillow. I didn't want to wake him up. He had warned me more than once, "Don't make any noise when you come into the room. I don't trust anybody over here. If I ask you who you are, you had better tell me quick or I'll draw down on you." I didn't take a shower and didn't want to make any noise at all with a roommate like that. I planned to shave and shower in the morning, after four hours of sleep.

Since I had to be back on duty in five hours, I didn't turn in my M-14 rifle, ammunition, or .45 caliber automatic to the company arms room. I placed them under my cot and fell into a deep sleep with my pistol belt, holster, canteens, grenades, and ammo pouches at my side.

Saigon was a scary place to work. Military police duty was a lot tougher than I had thought it would be after coming in from the field and six months' combat duty with the 30th Ranger Battalion, Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN). Out there I had my patrol dog, Suzie. She went with me everywhere. She was my constant companion. Out in the field, Suzie slept with me every night, tied to my wrist by twelve feet of parachute cord. I could rest in the field. With a lunatic for a roommate and terrorists on the streets of Saigon, I had to sleep with one eye open.

The squad of Viet Cong commandos in Cholon were joined by four so-called Saigon cowboys, local terrorists on Honda motorbikes, who guided them up Tran Hung Dao Street toward three possible targets, the Victoria Hotel, the U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, headquarters compound (called MACV 11), and the Military Police station. At the Victoria Hotel, some two hundred junior staff officers and advisors lay sleeping in a hundred small, cramped rooms.

I had been in Vietnam for ten months and, due to go home on June 1, I was worried about my survival. I was certain the Victoria was going to get blasted as had the Brinks Hotel, the U.S. Embassy, and the Metropole Hotel over the past fifteen months. We had received an intelligence summary stating that a major target for terrorists with a car bomb was the Victoria, a pie-shaped hotel with nine stories, but few officers really believed all the warnings about terrorist objectives.

At the Brinks Hotel on December 24, 1964, terrorists had killed two people and wounded 107 others with a truck bomb. At the U.S. Embassy on March 30, 1965, the Viet Cong (VC) had killed 22 people and wounded 190 others when a car bomb exploded. At the Metropole Hotel on Tran Hung Dao Street on December 4, 1965, three were killed and more than 100 were wounded after another truck bomb attack. One of the military policemen in my unit, Specialist Four Bill Seippel, was wounded in that bombing. He received a Bronze Star for Valor and Purple Heart after taking on a Viet Cong squad all by himself. Saigon was a scary place. Bombings of U.S. facilities were great victories for the unseen enemy.

The VC from Bien Hoa didn't know the Saigon streets well. The Saigon cowboys guided and directed their operation. At 4:15 A.M., the two terrorist trucks split up, merging into farmers' market traffic on Tran Hung Dao. The first truck was a get-away vehicle. The second was a quarter-ton bomb headed for the Victoria Hotel at 4:30 A.M. As well as being guides, the Saigon cowboys acted as security teams, sealing off the target and preventing police reinforcements from entering the area.

At 4:25 A.M., the terrorists in the lead vehicle opened fire on the MP station and on MACV 11 guards across from the Victoria. Nearby, in a jeep was the officer who had just taken over for me, Lieutenant Lee, who immediately ordered his driver, Specialist Michael T. Mulvaney, to step on the gas and head for MP headquarters to report.

Private First Class Patrick J. Brems, on duty at the Victoria, returned enemy fire. Armed with only a shotgun, he was overwhelmed by AK-47 automatic weapon fire and hand grenades. He quickly warned others in the hotel of the terrorist attack. The bomb vehicle halted in front of the hotel, while the VC on board opened fire on Brems and his Vietnamese policeman partner, Pham Van Ngoc, who was killed instantly.

Disregarding his personal safety, Brems pushed the truck away from the hotel out into the street. It exploded into thousands of pieces of shrapnel, leaving a gaping hole in the middle of Tran Hung Dao. The facade of the Victoria Hotel crumbled into a pile of dust on the street below. Most of the occupants, dazed and bleeding, began to evacuate the burning building, fearing it could collapse in minutes. Some officers in their underwear, some naked, fired their weapons onto Tran Hung Dao, scattering the terrorists in front of the hotel. Two Saigon cowboys, hiding behind the Moulin Rouge night club next to the Victoria, opened fire on Lee and Mulvaney with an AK-47 as the two MPs responded to the terrorist attack.

Three blocks away, I was thrown out of my bed by the enormous blast. My roommate landed on the floor next to me. He scrambled for his automatic, cursing and screaming, "Let's get the hell out of here before this whole place goes up in smoke."

My boots were on in a flash. I picked up my M-14 and jammed my automatic into its holster. Out of my room with helmet and flak jacket in hand, I bounded down the steps four floors to the street below, tripping over my bootlaces twice, crashing on to the sidewalk in front of the Navy officers' billet. I felt naked without my patrol dog. If she were with me, I could stop to tie my bootlaces while she would watch for terrorists. Sweat poured down into my eyes. I was rattled without Suzie. My roommate joined me on the street dressed in khaki shorts and sneakers, stripped to the waist. He was unarmed.

"Where's your weapon, man?" I asked him.

"God damn it, I lost the son of a bitch on the stairs," he cursed.

"Go back and get it and get your flak jacket too," I shouted.

"My jacket's on the boat," he yelled as he darted back into the hotel for his weapon.

Twenty officers from the Army and Navy armed with submachine guns, automatic pistols, and rifles were on the street searching for terrorists. Machine gun fire, bursts from other automatic weapons, and pistol shots could be heard the next block over. The streets were black. Power had gone out with the blast from the truck bomb. Since nobody was shooting at me, I tied my bootlaces, squatting down next to a crumbling concrete wall, and waited for something to happen. I was in a complete daze. Exhausted from long hours on duty, lack of sleep, and ten months in the combat zone, I knew my thinking was slow and uncoordinated. I heard the siren of an MP jeep, saw the red lights, and watched as it pulled up to my billet. I recognized the driver, Specialist Four Lassiter, from my unit. The MP jeep was one of Company B's patrol vehicles. Lassiter said in his southern drawl, "They hit the Victoria, sir."

My executive officer, First Lieutenant Robert Zins, a cop from Youngstown, Ohio, came out of the shadows. "Ready to go, sir," he shouted.

"Yeah, let's go," I replied.

We jumped into the jeep and with lights out rolled cautiously towards Tran Hung Dao. I kept looking in the back seat for Suzie. I vowed never to be without a patrol dog again.

We didn't talk. With our eyes accustomed to the darkness, we scanned left and right looking for movement on the streets. There was none. Not a soul could be seen, but we knew we were being watched. We were sitting ducks rolling down the street on the way to the crime scene knowing full well terrorists would be escaping from the area, most probably running directly at us.

One block from the Victoria we stopped, dismounted, and went forward on foot. Lieutenant Zins disappeared back into the shadows. Lassiter and I crept forward towards a series of fires, smoke billowing up from a thousand holes in the street, and devastation resembling the London blitz of 1940. An entire city block had been reduced to a pile of smoking rubble. I expected to see Suzie walking out front, but she wasn't there. We were on our own.

A Honda motorbike came at us from the alley behind the Moulin Rouge before we could scatter for cover. It crashed into our jeep in the middle of the road. Two terrorists in black shirts carrying K-5 pistols were pinned under the vehicle. They aimed their weapons at us. I fired off a full magazine of M- 1 4 tracer ammo, twenty rounds, cutting both in half in less than five seconds. I wasn't going to check to see if they were dead.

Lassiter rushed up, telling me, "MPs are in front of us. There's a jeep up there, sir."

Lieutenant Zins and Captain Bill Hollenbeck, my former boss from the 30th Rangers, were standing next to an MP jeep. The driver, Mike Mulvaney, was dead. Lieutenant Lee, the duty officer I had briefed at midnight, lay dying next to him, hit three times in the chest by an AK-47. Chet Lee wasn't wearing his flak jacket. His .45 caliber automatic in his right hand was empty. Lee and Mulvaney had been ambushed by the two terrorists I had just killed.

The two dead Saigon cowboys had discarded their AK-47 on Tran Hung Dao as they escaped from the area. Lassiter picked it up. I cleared it of ammunition and gave it to Captain Mike Harvey, the 716th MP Battalion intelligence officer, himself wounded by the blast.

I had been trained in mass casualty first aid before Vietnam but never really knew what it was all about. I had always thought mass casualties would occur after a plane crash or a train wreck. I was not prepared for a bombing in a city. This April Fools Day, I had 165 casualties to handle as the senior officer on this crime scene at 5 A.M. There were no ambulances, no medics, just the moans and groans of wounded and dying people. In the deep darkness before dawn, Vietnamese civilian dead and wounded lay everywhere I turned. Walking wounded, half naked survivors from the Victoria, stumbled about in the street heading for cover at MACV 11 or the MP station. I was powerless to help anybody. There was nothing Lassiter or I could do. I wondered if I would see my wife and daughter again.

I ordered every MP who reported to me to secure the crime scene. "Don't let anybody in or out. Kill any civilian with a weapon or anybody who runs from this area." Next we had to look for a second bomb. The terrorist always plants a second bomb to kill off the rescue workers arriving on the scene. We had to wait until daylight, 6:30 to 7:00 A.M., to conduct a proper search. We had too much time on our hands, too much time to think.

Captain Hollenbeck stripped to the waist and covered Mulvaney's face with his shirt. Mike had been hit in the face and had died instantly. Lee's vehicle, hit by AK-47 fire, wouldn't start. We tenderly carried Lee to our Jeep to transport him to the U.S. Navy hospital half a mile away. His eyes were open as he gasped for breath. I held him in my arms as best I could.

"Why weren't you wearing your flak jacket?" I shouted, angry that he had been ambushed. Then I told him, "You'll make it!" But I knew he would die soon. I asked him a thousand questions about the bombing.

Lassiter cautioned me, "Take it easy on him, sir. He can't talk." There was no answer, just a gasp of air. His eyes closed.

I carried Chet Lee into the hospital emergency room. The Navy staff was waiting and well prepared after their mass casualties experience on December 4 at the Metropole bombing. Chief Medical Corpsman Ed Wilson took Lee from me, placing him on the floor next to a door. He covered Lee with a sheet.

I saw an Army sergeant with a nasty four-inch slash wound on his right forearm being sewn up by other corpsmen. I told Wilson, "Lee has been hit pretty bad, a lot worse than that guy. Can't you do somethin-?" I insisted Lee be treated for his chest wounds.

"He's dead, sir. Go back to your unit," the chief ordered, pushing me towards the door.

I just couldn't believe it, I had been talking to him all the way to the hospital. He had died in my arms.

As daylight broke, about 6:30 A.M., I could see the contents of almost every room in the entire Victoria structure with the front of the building blasted away. Littering the street below were furniture, blood-stained bedding, wall lockers, mirrors, bathroom fixtures, hallway doors, and small refrigerators. When briefing my company about this terrorist act on April Fool's Day, I lost emotional control for the first time in my nine-year military career. I simply could not handle the stress. I had to stop talking when explaining what happened on Tran Hung Dao Street that morning. I got so choked up in front of the 200 military policemen of Company B that First Sergeant Company took over. Lieutenant Zins walked me back to my office and said, "Get some sleep, sir. It's been a long day."

I looked at my watch. It was just 8 A.M.

Lieutenant Chester L. Lee from El Dorado, Arkansas, was posthumously awarded the Silver Star for gallantry and the Purple Heart for wounds received in action. For Patrick Brem, the soldier who had pushed the bomb truck into the street away from the Victoria Hotel, his parents received a Distinguished Service Cross for his extraordinary heroism and a Purple Heart for mortal wounds received that day. My Patrol Dog, Suzie

Suzie's real name was Xa Xi, sarsaparilla, because she loved to drink that carbonated soda. Xa Xi was a favorite drink of the Vietnamese. Suzie was not an item of Army issue. She belonged to Father Nguyen Cong Tu, the village priest in Cau Xang.

Suzie kept Father Tu alive for several years by alerting on any person who came near the priest. The Viet Cong placed a handsome price on his head since he was both a spiritual leader and a guerrilla fighter. Suzie guarded him day and night. Suzie could be vicious and would attack any person who threatened her owner.

I received Suzie from Father Tu as a present after I gave him a .38 caliber pistol and a sterling silver set of rosary beads. Suzie slept next to me every night, tied to my wrist with parachute cord. She was responsible for saving my life on many occasions. As a military advisor, I also had a price on my head, but Suzie made sure nobody harmed me. She was the perfect German shepherd, obedient, faithful, devoted, and always at my side. I never took Suzie for granted.

In December 1965, 1 returned Suzie to Father Tu when I left my ranger battalion unit, for a military police assignment in Saigon.

In 1983, while a professional dog handler and K-9 security specialist, I bought another German shepherd, Bonnie, just because she looked like Suzie. Bonnie and Suzie were so much alike that even today I often cannot tell them apart when I see their photos in my K-9 files.